As the fellow describes, an innocuous matter. But the behavior of the NBC person is quite suggestive, isn't it . . . To me, this is just one more piece of straw in the pig pen though. The fact that many of these firms act ON BEHALF of the DNC, and AGAINST the "enemies" of the DNC seems to me to be so blatant that is nearly beyond question.

Still, nice to have a solid example, even if it is hearsay (unless the guy recorded the convo).

It probably wasn’t recorded because I presume that he never expected to receive a call like this.

I think the press had reached out to Dabna for comment.

Should she provide a response, that night serve as some confirmation.I suppose his caller ID might list either her number or show up as some main number for NBC.

_________________The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.- misattributed to Alexis De Tocqueville

No representations made as to the accuracy of info in posted news articles or links

I totally expect that she called him to try to pressure him NOT to behave like a legit journalist because she wanted to help out the DNC. However, with that said, it is interesting to note, how EASY it is for someone like her to do this, get away with it, and then simply claim that "No, that is not what I said/the tone I used/how the conversation went. He is being misleading . . . " unless there is a recording.

This is why the strategy has worked so well for so long, it is basically just an elaborate "Good Old Boy/Girl Network" which generally operates within legality, even if outside ethicality.

Reports like this are essential to making a change, but it will take a while and a lot more than just this sort of "report." Some of the most egregiously corrupt media firms need to be caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar.

1. Yesterday, I received a call from @DafnaLinzer who serves as managing editor of NBC/MSNBC politics. Dafna's conduct during the call was highly inappropriate and unethical. So what was the purpose of her call?

She called me to bully me on behalf of the DNC

2. Dafna, who oversees the political coverage for NBC and MSNBC, was calling to bully me into delaying the publication of an innocuous scoop and at no point did she advocate for her network, it was only about the DNC.Here's how this all started...

3. Yesterday morning I received a tip from a trusted source. The source told me the DNC would be announcing the dates of the first 2020 primary debates later that day. The source gave me the dates they would be announcing: June 26 and 27.

4. At first I thought it was just a fun tidbit that I could tweet out. But after I called several presidential campaign staffers I learn that all the Dem campaigns were desperate to learn what the dates were going to be. I decided to post the scoop as an item in my newsletter.

5. This wasn't a huge scoop but it was a decent one so I quickly called the DNC to fact-check the tip as I was running out of time: the dates would be announced on MSNBC in the 4:00 PM hour. It's important to note that almost of all of my communication with the DNC was off record

6. So I won't share most of what was said but can tell you it's pretty run-of-the mill stuff. I asked the DNC if my tip was accurate and they asked if they could call me back in 10 minutes. A few minutes later they called back and asked if I could delay posting my scoop

7. For another hour so they could go through their important notification calls to the state parties. I told them I couldn't wait as the news would leak and leave me without a story. That's all I can say about the call. Two minutes later I received a call from Dafna.

8. I've never spoken to Dafna by phone. A couple years ago she reached out to me to see if I wanted to have coffee and talk about working at NBC News but I declined as I was actively investigating NBC matters and thought it would be strange if I discussed a job.

9. So when I saw Dafna calling I assumed she would ask me to consider delaying my post so that MSNBC could announce it first. Given that this was an innocuous scoop and not some investigative story I wouldn't have lost sleep if I had delayed. But that's not why she was calling.

10. After exchanging pleasantries, Dafna told me that she received a call from the DNC and was told I had a story. Now it's not strange that the DNC called her, they were coordinating an announcement. What was strange was that she was calling me and taking a menacing tone

11. She asked if I could hold the story and I said I couldn't. She was agitated, "why not?" I said I'm not going to lose a scoop. Then she got angrier and said "Why not? It's not a big deal, let them make a few phone calls."

12. I realized that @DafnaLinzer, the head of all political coverage for NBC News and MSNBC wasn't calling to advocate for her network, she was calling to advocate the DNC's position. She wanted me to wait so they could call state party leaders.

13. I thought to myself "this is how people think it works." [That is, this is how suspicious types like us think that the political-media complex works-- ace] It's not. But Dafna was doing it. She kept pressing me. Now I acknowledged, for stuff that isn't about serious investigative reporting, there is no problem holding something. But I knew once others got the call

14. I would lose a scoop. Dafna reminded me she was a nat sec reporter at WAPO for ten years and they would hold stuff all the time (note: so people wouldn't get killed). "Why can't you just wait, let them make their calls, then you'll be the first to put it into print," she said

15. I couldn't believe what she was saying. Again, it was fine for me to print the story an hour later, beat her own network by three hours, she just wanted me to let the DNC inform state party leaders. Why the hell did she care?

16. I kept telling Dafna no, that I wasn't waiting. And she kept getting more frustrated. She was exasperated...she didn't understand why I couldn't wait for the DNC to make their state notification calls.

17. I was so surprised me that she was talking this way with a total stranger. The head of the political division was trying to bully me at the behest of the DNC over a dumb scoop (even though they may not have asked her to)

18. 2/3 of the way into the conversation Dafna started a sentence with "this is off the record." She hadn't said it at the beginning of our conversation and most important at no point did I agree when she said "off record" to keep it off record.

19. I'm not one of those gotcha reporters, I think it's bad for sourcing relationships to make people like they constantly feel like they have to say "off record." But Dafna isn't a source and she was calling to intimidate me, so she doesn't get the benefit.

20. She said "off record" one more time later in the call and again I just let her keep talking, I did not agree to anything. I then told her I had to go talk to my editor and she got even more frustrated and said "No. I want to talk to you about this."

21. I said "no, I want to go talk to my editor." Then she sent me over the edge and said "What's your editors name, I want to talk to them." She was trying to intimidate me..on behalf of the DNC. I ended the call.

22. After the call with Dafna I published the stupid scoop. Then I did a gut check and over the next two hours I called 10 experienced prominent reporters and told them the story. They were all stunned by what Dafna did and encouraged me to share it publicly.

23. I'm not naive to the fact that this incident is going to be twisted by some with an agenda to discredit the media and say they collude with political parties. But I think its more important to expose bad behavior then keep it under wraps. What Dafna did was unethical

24. There are plenty of times reporters will introduce people in politics to other reporters or TV people. I have done it many times, that is advocating for more coverage, not less. Dafna was advocating for me to not do something on behalf of a political party.

25. What I can't figure out is (and no one else I spoke to could understand), why open yourself up to this for a stupid story? How was this worth it?

END

_________________The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.- misattributed to Alexis De Tocqueville

No representations made as to the accuracy of info in posted news articles or links

BY MADISON GESIOTTO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 09/09/19 06:00 PM EDT 2,697 THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

The people who have made an industry out of destroying ordinary people’s lives over old social media posts and out-of-context comments are very upset that it’s happening to them. The New York Times, clearly worried by the recent exposure of blatantly anti-Semitic tweets posted by one of its reporters, and clearly worried that even more embarrassing material is in reserve, tried to stop the hemorrhaging with a rambling article demonizing the independent journalists who uncovered the tweets.

In fact, much of the liberal media sphere went into panic mode, vehemently declaring that this particular exercise of the First Amendment is actually an attack on the First Amendment. The reason why liberal editors are so distraught that independent conservative journalists are publishing evidence of the racist, anti-Semitic, and otherwise vile sentiments expressed by their supposedly “objective” employees comes down — as it usually does — to power.

Many journalists are in the profession not to inform the public, but to gain the power to destroy people who question them — and they don’t like those tactics being turned against them. “sing journalistic techniques to target journalists and news organizations ... is fundamentally different from the well-established role of the news media in scrutinizing people in positions of power,” the Times wrote in its article — which was of course labeled “news,” not “opinion.”

The newspaper’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, added that “the political operatives behind this campaign will argue that they are ‘reporting’ on news organizations in the same way that news organizations report on elected officials and other public figures,” but he roundly rejected that claim, insisting that his antagonists are trying to “manipulate the facts for political gain.”

To their credit, not everyone in the elite media world is buying it. Erik Wemple of The Washington Post and Jack Shafer of Politico both wrote rebukes of the Times’s indignation. Neither is a conservative “political operative,” but both found Sulzberger’s statement hypocritical and incongruent with the Times’s own reporting on this story. As Wemple put it, [u]“For decades now, representatives of the mainstream media have answered conservative critiques by imploring: Judge us by the work we produce, not by the fact that more than 90 percent of us are liberal/Democratic. Mainstreamers cannot have it both ways.”

Considering that the Times recently held a staff meeting at which employees strategized over how best to undermine President Trump, Sulzberger doesn’t have much standing to complain about media bias. Clearly, he thinks that his journalists deserve special privileges and protections because the targets of their attacks are so important.

Yet, the media outlets The New York Times is painting as victims used out-of-context video clips to claim that a group of teenage boys from a Catholic high school in Kentucky engaged in a racist attack on an innocent Native American Vietnam veteran. The story was a complete lie — fabricated by left-wing activists and circulated by some of the country’s most “prestigious” newspapers. They did it because those teenagers wore MAGA hats — and in the sick, twisted minds of today’s liberal journalists, that makes them and their families legitimate targets.

CNN, which the Times also portrays as a victim, went after an obscure social media user for making a meme of the president wrestling a figure with CNN’s logo. The Daily Beast, another left-wing outlet, once doxxed a black forklift driver because he posted a meme about “drunk Nancy Pelosi.”

Most hypocritical of all, however, is HuffPost editor-in-chief — and New York Times alumna — Lydia Polgreen. She called the prospect of journalists being held to the same standards as their targets “extremely alarming,” hypocritically arguing this “should worry anyone who cares about independent journalism” — even though people now being attacked by the establishment media are acting as independent journalists.

In the mind of leftist journalists, destroying people’s lives is “speaking truth to power” and “independent journalism.” It’s not. It’s a pure, shameless abuse of power by those who have it against those who don’t. It’s a deliberate exploitation of the far-left hate mobs that Big Tech still allows to organize on social media, even as the tech giants ban conservative users for “harassment” when they criticize journalists.

Just recently, The New York Times complained to a professor’s employer about a tweet referring to one of its high-profile columnists as a “bedbug.” The liberal media have made an art form out of digging up controversial tweets in order to attack ordinary Americans who support President Trump, and now that they’re being given a dose of their own medicine, they’ve discovered that they don’t like the taste. What goes around comes around, though, and those who live by the social media “gotcha” game shouldn’t be surprised if their eventual undoing comes by the same means.

Madison Gesiotto is an attorney and a commentator who serves with the advisory board of the Donald Trump campaign. She was an inauguration spokesperson and former Miss Ohio. She is on Twitter @MadisonGesiotto.

Whoops...did I just commit some PC faux pas by referring to only two genders?(Is there a 3rd gender for geese?)

_________________The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.- misattributed to Alexis De Tocqueville

No representations made as to the accuracy of info in posted news articles or links

_________________This post is not a legal document under any circumstance. It has not been prepared at all and is written offhand in jest while mentally impaired.Do not act or rely on any of this information without first seeking the advice of a psychoanalyst.

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